Liner notes: ‘Technologic’ by Daft Punk
Classic Daft Punk represent the aural peak of 1990s and early 2000s cyberculture: two shiny posthuman cyborgs and a vocoder making strange sounds and excessive, repetitive beats.
There’s no narrative to ‘Technologic’, only a bombardment by commands that the listener “buy it, use it, break it, fix it”. We’re never told what ‘it’ is––but it is clearly technology, analogue or digital, of some sort. The song is about the cognitive overload that is technological advancement in the 21st century, and the necessity of being up-to-date, state-of-the-art, bleeding-edge. Sure, there’s a critique of consumerist culture––… but far more interesting is the semantic breakdown occurring through the song (as allegory for the technology integrated into our lives), through the use of repetition, reminiscent of Gertrude Stein’s “a rose is a rose is a rose” or the dadaist beats of Hugo Ball.
